A Secret Club?

There I was, having a quiet cup of tea working on my questions for the meeting with Mr. Fryer when I received the message from Verona Pharmaceuticals (VP’s) investigators that the share price was moving again. The message also said that more information had been gleaned from the hidden camera in the Clinical Trials Unit’s desk computer. The investigation was starting to make progress. It was clear that the poor girl Jules was either very clever, or a pawn. And as for Ronnie, who knows?

St. Angela’s University Teaching Hospital (Illustration by Bill Morris)

Alex, St. Angela’s weary chief executive, convened a case conference to assess the investigation’s direction. It was a large meeting involving VP’s fraud team, the financial authority’s investigative team, and St. Angela’s inquiry team, led by Sue to whom I worked. Our conclusion was that the share price movement was not random and that whoever was behind it was very knowledgeable about how confidential clinical trials information – good or bad – can affect share prices. He or she was probably connected to the traders involved, and smart enough to manipulate the share price through the traders for personal gain. Listening to the discussions, Alex felt the dread of the hospital’s inspectors finding out about the investigation. He needed to keep all this under wraps. Continue reading →